Aptitude Test for Public Servants

Cabinet Secretariat released the result of aptitude test on public workers for Ministries earlier this month. Among all 97,560 examinees, only one person was recognized as inappropriate to deal with designated secrets of government. The test was criticized as a violation of human rights, because it referred to medical history, nationality of families or credit history. However, what was the meaning of the test, in which only one out of about a hundred thousand could be filtered, anyway?

Result of the test was released on December 1^st, the day Designated Secrecy Law was fully activated after a year of preparation period. About nine thousands of examinees were workers for Ministry of Defense, who were possible to access secret information of national government. Rest of the examinees included staffs with Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Police Agency, Cabinet Secretariat and workers for private company related to defense policy. The test was paper based and the examinees answered questions listed on about thirty pages.

The greatest concern was violation of privacy. Not only history of involvement in spy activity of terrorism, the test examines history of crime, mental disease, experience of drug, habitation of drinking or private debt. When the examiners find necessity, they can have an interview to the worker or refer to public organization including medical doctor. Some doctors are worrying about breakdown of trust between doctor and patient.

When a public worker leaked designated secret, he or she will be punished with penalty of ten years in prison or less under Designated Secrecy Law. The problem here is that it is difficult to protect a worker from wrong suspect. If a worker unintentionally obtained designated secret, taking picture of brand-new military equipment in testing field for example, he/she cannot be defended, because what kind of secret he/she has stolen is unknown. It reminds of dark wartime regime, in which police could arrest the people at their disposal.

By the way, did the test really work? All the examinees except one passed it. The ratio of passing the test was amazing. One can have question: didn’t they have families with skeptical nationalization, weren’t anyone experienced diagnosis of psychological breakdown, or did they all really passed doping test? It is unclear who will be responsible when some of those successful examinees commit a crime of leaking classified information. Human, not law, still rules.